Didi's Eccentricities
Earlier the wise had advised Mamata Banerjee to try and keep her mouth shut as much as possible to avoid making a faux pas. She hadn’t listened of course. Now they say it’s just as well, because with every utterance her true colours are coming out and it will help people see the real Didi. In an almost unbelievably callous series of remarks after the rape and murder of a college girl in Kamduni Village, the Bengal Chief Minster kept the entire state outraged through the week. After telling the women of Kamduni who had crowded around her demanding safety (during her visit to the girl’s house ten days after the incident) to “shut up,” she branded them Maoists. Later speaking at a public rally she accused the women, along with Opposition parties CPI-M and Congress for plotting to kill her. She even went to the extent of saying that the news channels which were reporting the matter and their talk show guests were perverts who enjoyed discussing the rapes and that she had secret information that they were into pornography.
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A walk by Calcutta’s civil society and general public to protest against the recent spate of brutal attacks on women in the state including Kamduni and Park Street had already been planned for June 21. It was feted to be a large turnout but after those comments it seems few people wanted to miss the protest rally. Hundreds and thousands of people, not just from Calcutta but from the towns and villages (including Kamduni and other villages), walked from Calcutta’s College Square to Espalande.
In Revenge Mode
In the meantime the TMC government has swung into revenge mode like never before. The government’s intelligence cell, CID, summoned the former Housing Minister Gautam Deb to interrogate him in an alleged housing land scam. The state government also complained to the Calcutta High Court against the CBI, which is investigating the Nandigram firing which killed 14 people on March 14, 2007 during the Left Front regime alleging that the report submitted by Central investigative body was too lenient towards people like former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who, the state government alleges, ordered the firing.
Court-ing Shakespeare
Quoting Shakespeare - or rather disagreeing with him somewhat - one of the judges hearing the rural polls case in the Calcutta High Court in which the state election commission and the state government is fighting it out had said, “To be or not to…that is NOT the question.” In other words, the Panchayat Elections must take place in order to avoid a constitutional crisis. But even as the date draws nearer - its first phase is scheduled for July 2 - the deadlock between the state election commission and the state government over deployment of forces and other matters continues. The state government has further been accused of intimidating opponents and a large number of seats are going to the polls uncontested.
Disaster in Waiting
It took a tragedy of the magnitude of the Himalayan tsunami to draw attention to the way that the administration flouts environmental regulations regularly. In Calcutta, environmentalists have long been pointing out that the creation of the New Town township which constructed after choking stretches and stretches of wetlands which had served as Bengal’s “drain” through which excess water drained out eastward towards the Bay of Bengal. But the administration is looking the other way. Is a disaster waiting to happen in Bengal too?
